When police stumbled across the makeshift shelter in the Joshua Tree desert last week they made a shocking discovery: three children were living in a plywood box. There was no record of the children attending school. The parents, Mona Kirk, 51, and Daniel Panico, 73, were charged with three felony counts of child abuse and the children were put in care of social services.

A former child bride who fled a fundamentalist Mormon cult has told how the sect’s leader reminded her she was “the property” of her husband after she begged him to free her from the forced marriage. Elissa Wall suffered multiple miscarriages after being made to marry her cousin at the age of 14 under the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Jeffs, said to have had 78 wives and more than 50 children in the Utah church, was jailed for life in 2011 after being convicted of sexually assaulting two girls aged 12 and 15.

A Pakistani court Saturday handed four death sentences to a man charged with raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, in a case that shocked the country and sparked major riots in his home district. Imran Ali, 24, was on trial for killing Zainab Fatima Ameen in the eastern city of Kasur last month. Ali was handed four separate death sentences after being convicted of the rape and murder of Zainab, as well as terrorism charges, prosecutor general of Punjab province Ihtesham Qadir said after a special anti-terrorism court passed its judgement.

A Pakistani court Saturday handed four death sentences to a man charged with raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, in a case that shocked the country and sparked major riots in his home district. Imran Ali, 24, was on trial for killing Zainab Fatima Ameen in the eastern city of Kasur last month. Ali was handed four separate death sentences after being convicted of the rape and murder of Zainab, as well as terrorism charges, prosecutor general of Punjab province Ihtesham Qadir said after a special anti-terrorism court passed its judgement.